At this writing, a whopping 225,759 people say they like Tebow's Facebook page, even though the wall sports a grand total of one Tebow note -- his September 8 introduction, which reads, "Thanks for all the years of support -- I'm really excited about being able to keep in touch with all of you on facebook and www.twitter.com/timtebow."
Somehow, that was fascinating enough to prompt 1,401 comments at this writing.
Tebow offered a bit more on his Twitter page, coming up with three tweets: a duplicate of the Facebook comment, a pointer to his website, TimTebow.com, and this:
Before I call it a night, I just wanted to thank everyone who checked out my site and decided to follow me on day one! GB²
Tim Tebow
TimTebow
Yep, all three of his bon mots appeared on September 8, too -- but that didn't stop the masses from flocking, as documented in a bizarre/hilarious item by Football Outsiders' Mike Tanier.
In the piece, Tanier notes that when he signed up to follow Tebow "at 2:34 p.m. that day [September 8], he had 1,357 followers. By 3:52 p.m. he was up to 9,204... By 4:32 p.m., he was at 11,106 followers. By 6:48 p.m., he reached 14,625. At 7:02 the next morning, he reached 20,184."
At that point, Tanier blew the dust of his TI-83 graphing calculator and ran "some two-variable regressions" in an attempt to predict future follower growth, leading to this priceless paragraph:
Using the data points listed above and a few others, I determined that Tebow's followers were increasing at a logarithmic rate. The formula the calculator gave me was y = -41725 + 18182 ln(x). According to the model, Tebow acquired his first follower just before 10 a.m. on September 8. His first tweet is dated at 1:05 p.m. on that date, so it isn't a bad post-diction. But I found that the logarithmic model increased too quickly. At 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, he had 28,013 followers. By 1 p.m. sharp on Monday, he was up to 29,494. The model predicted 39,365 and 41,725 followers.
Head hurt yet? Not Tanier's, who ran the numbers again yesterday to come up with a prediction of 40,000 followers by noon today.
Nope: At publication time, the page had 33,574 followers. So either math lies, or the Tebow-Twitter fever has died down because he's had nothing new to share.
